I can't speak for every employer, but I've done a fair bit of interviewing & hiring over the past year, and my experience indicates that many technical interviewers are looking for employees that have demonstrated an ability to take ownership of (and solve) problems and have demonstrated that they've improved their own work processes/practices and those of their fellow team members. Many desirable candidates became "The Build Lady" or "The Source Control Guy" or something similar because there was a need in their organization, and the candidate decided to fill that need by implementing some solution.
I've shared these observations with a former coworker who is in a situation similar to yours: he has been in the same role, working with the same technologies, for the past decade or so, and he wants to broaden his skills and make himself more employable. My former coworker understands conceptually how he can advance his career, but his own fears often prevent him taking action. I think that he feels that any solution he comes up with needs to be technically brilliant and will perfectly solve whatever problem he is addressing. I've told him that my own experience shows that is not true. Nobody is an expert on everything, and virtually every solution has flaws, so don't let the fear of failure or the fear of the unknown prevent you from trying something new.
Now, maybe the situation that I described isn't relevant to your situation, but it's clearly relevant to some people, so I wanted to share.
